Helen Stephenson's Chislehurst Fireworks Pictures (1st November, 2003)

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Fireworks are something I've been meaning to aim a camera at for some time, and having committed myself to giving a night time photography talk for the Discovery Group of the Bromley Camera Club on 9th December, my mind was concentrated on going out and taking some images to illustrate my talk. Here are some of the images I took at my local fireworks display, which was put on in the Chislehurst Recreation Ground by the Rotary Club.

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A small fairground was set up to keep people entertained prior to the main events of the night. Most of my fairground pictures were unremarkable, but I quite liked this one of a Tin Can Alley.


 

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Half an hour before the fireworks were due to start, a large bonfire made up mostly of pallets was lit. As far as I could see, they didn't burn a Guy.


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I like this atmospheric picture of the crowd by bonfire light. When I tried to include the bonfire and the trees it was lighting up, I found that the bonfire was too bright to make a particularly good picture, though.

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When the fireworks started going off, I set my camera (loaded with 100ASA Kodak Elitechrome Extra Colour slide film) to its 'bulb' setting so that I could open the shutter for whatever length of time I pleased, set my lens to f16 and starting snapping away. My first worthwhile effort was this cluster of fireworks.


 

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The advice regarding lens selection for fireworks was anything between 28mm and 200mm, but I decided that my 18-28 super wide angle zoom was the lens I wanted for the job. It could fit in the ground level where the fireworks were being fired all the way through to the place in the sky where the large shells were exploding.


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I liked the effect of grasses conveyed by the trails these fireworks left.


These two pictures were among my favourites, but the single exploding shell in the sky was considerably less bright than what was going on nearer to the ground, so I have digitally manipulated these to achieve a more balanced effect. You can see silhouettes of some small trees in the picture on the left, which really adds an element of scale.

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Here are my most minimalistic efforts, but they form interesting designs.


The final six pictures all give floral impressions to a greater or lesser degree.


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I was very pleased with the results I achieved from my first fireworks outing with my camera. Having seen these results, I was confident that when I went to Leeds Castle for their fireworks display a week later that I was on the right track when it came to fireworks photography.


If you've enjoyed the fireworks pictures on this page, why not visit my Leeds Castle Fireworks (8th November, 2003) page, where there are more fireworks to be enjoyed.






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Last Revised: 15th November, 2003.